Do you think about the work you do?
I mean, loving what you do. Consciously choosing it. And, finding meaning in your life through it.
Last night, over Viber, I was speaking to a young man, Bobby, about his job. He’s struggling. Having employment-related anxiety and panic attacks.
He had to take an indefinite leave due to the unmanageability of his mood swings and demotivated state.
It turns out he’s experiencing a lot of stress at work and feeling already burned out. But more than that, he’s fast losing confidence and a hold of himself.
Work is a natural element of life. It fulfills expression of the life-force within a person.
We can observe and say then that your work is therefore something connected to your self.
It’s very much part of your mind, body, emotions, and spirit. It’s a mirror of you as a person.
In order to “work,” your work simply needs to make sense to your own life as a whole in an organic, synergistic way.
Or, you break down, sooner or later.
Psychologist Dr. Marsha Sinetar, in her book “Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow,” aptly explains:
“ … in order to have a positive, mature, and personally helpful attitude about doing work, the individual must first be aware of having a ‘distinct self’ that is able to choose, a self whose reality is clearly understood and appreciated and worth making some sacrifices for. It is this understanding of the self as distinctive (as well as having the developmental readiness as a personality which allows one to choose, which permits one to take the consequences for conscious choices) that precedes and produces life’s constructive actions.”
To apply what Dr. Sinetar’s work prescription requires a certain detachment. It’s detachment that makes you able to be objective to your self as well as to the dictates of others.
